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Saumthalla
Saumthalla is the goddess of death, storms and the night. She is the daughter of Mordra and Nocturnus and the sister of Iovantus and Hrothar Aspects The Mourning Hour This aspect of Saumthalla embodies regret and sorrow. Named for the midnight a night and a day after a creature dies, the time when the soul leaves the body, this is when most funerary rites are completed, often with prayers to The Mourning Hour. Midnight is also the time to pray for atonement after a misdeed or failure. Followers of the Mourning hour include the bereaved, the regretful and morticians and temples to her double as mortuaries, graveyards and confessionals. Priests of The Mourning Hour are known for their distinctive black robes that conceal every part of their body, this is both a religious observation and a matter of hygiene while preparing dead bodies, those that come to the temple to confess their misdeeds are offered the robes to conceal their identity. Breaching the privacy of the confessional is said to bring the wrath of Saumthalla down upon a person. The Irresistible Storm Saumthalla in the form of The Irresistible storm has dominion over the cataclysmic forces of nature. Prayers are offered to the Irresistible Storm by those desperate souls that find themselves in the midst of natural disasters and are rarely answered. Priests of The Irresistible Storm offer tribute to the goddess while blessing voyages and journeys through hostile landscapes and often find employment among ship crews and trade caravans rather than fixed temples. Those temples that do exist are often more gathering places than structures as the faith holds that any structure made by man can be destroyed by the forces of nature at any time. The Harbinger of the Labyrinth The Harbinger of the Labyrinth is less an aspect of Saumthalla than a role she performs, at midnight every night she carries the waiting souls of the dead into The Labyrinth. Prayers and priests of the Harbinger are prohibited by the faiths own doctrine, only those who are dying may pray to the Harbinger. The only ritual that the living may offer to the Harbinger is to place a single silver coin in the mouth of a corpse, to pay Saumthalla for her service. In some traditions a special role is permitted of a priest of Saumthalla, although a priest may not declare themselves to venerate the Harbinger they may take on the role of bearing the Book of the Dead, a great tome which the dying may ask to read from, it contains the writings of other dying creatures to which the dying may contribute a message to. As only the dying are permitted to read from the Book of the Dead the bearer must be blinded. Myths The Murder of Nocturnus Long ago the god Nocturnus was the Harbinger of the Labyrinth and the inescapable specter of death. His wife the goddess Mordra was the eldest among the gods and began to fear her coming death, she first begged her husband to swear never to take her to the Labyrinth. Despite his love for her and her offers to capture anything in the world, he would not swear it. She then in her desperation began to plot to kill her husband and so liberate herself and all creation from the fear of death, though she was powerful she feared facing Nocturnus in battle or perhaps feared that love would stay her hand and so decided to ask her children to slay him for her. First she beseeched her eldest son Hrothar to strike down his father, Hrothar refused and rode faster than anything in creation to warn his father of the plot, Nocturnus fearing a battle with his own children fled to his keep in The Shadow. Mordra then asked Iovantus her second son to free the world from death, Iovantus loved his mother and so travelled to The Shadow to slay his father but could not overcome the walls of his great keep, ashamed he fled to wander the planes. Finally Mordra asked her youngest child and only daughter Saumthalla to slay Nocturnus, Saumthalla desired true immortality for herself, the world and her mother and agreed that the death of her father was a price worth paying. In that very moment she cast a thunderbolt at Nocturnus, it flew through the window of the keep and struck him in the heart killing him immediately. Mother, Daughter and all creation rejoiced that they may live forever, but that night Saumthalla awoke to find herself in her fathers keep, beside his body, the road to the Labyrinth beckoning, though she tried to leave the keep was unbreachable, from without or within. Midnight, a night and a day after the death of Nocturnus she relented and carried his soul to The Labyrinth, weeping all the way at the futility of her actions and the waste of her fathers life. And from that day forth Saumthalla inherited her fathers duties, bound to perform them as he was until the day of her death. Category:Deities